This being the case, the matter slept, until, some years afterwards (in 1853), it became evident that the National Gallery must be either extended or removed. Against the notion of moving it out of the way to South Kensington, entertained by many, and favoured by His Royal Highness the late Prince Consort, Sir Charles most strongly protested, and he ventured (as a Member of the Royal Commission of 1851) to address a detailed letter to His Royal Highness, containing an elaborate counter-scheme. This letter is printed (by permission) in the Appendix, both for the sake of the intrinsic importance of its suggestions, and as a specimen of his official correspondence. Its substance was as follows: After stating forcibly the objection which he conceived to exist to the proposed concentration at South Kensington, he proceeded first to develope a plan for the formation of the “British Museum of Art and Literature” on the site of the present British Museum in Great Russell Street, by the alterations already referred to, which had previously been submitted to the Government. It may be remarked that it was based on a principle, analogous to that on which he had advocated the removal of the Natural History collections. It seemed to him that the works of art of all ages should fitly be viewed together, that the “National Gallery” was chronologically a sequel to the Gallery of Antiquities. The rudest efforts of imitative art, the works of Assyrian, Egyptian, Grecian, and Roman antiquity, the schools of art of mediæval and modern Europe, all seemed to form one great whole. He would have united them locally, as they are connected theoretically. Accordingly, removing the Natural History collections as before, he proposed to raise the whole suite of rooms assigned to them, to re-roof and re-light them, and so to form a range of galleries, excellently adapted for pictures and sculpture, and capable of containing the national collection for many years to come. This scheme, or some scheme like it, he at all times strongly advocated. It had certainly much to recommend it in abstract principle; he endeavoured, not unsuccessfully, to prove that it could be carried out gradually and systematically, without enormous outlay and without public inconvenience. He next proceeded to urge the scheme, already referred to, for the transference of the Natural History collections to South Kensington, in connection with zoological and botanical gardens; and he would have united it to a “National Gallery of Science” in its various practical applications, with museums, laboratories, and the like.